02:48 pm - Lots of fruity thingsOn Sunday I visited the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, with H. Oh, man it's great. There are a lot of things there I have seen in books since I was a child, and it's nice to see them in real. The building was renovated fairly recently, and it's well laid out and full of light.

I just ate durian. Have you heard of it or eaten it? It tastes nice, a bit like papaya or something, but it smells really stinky.

“ ... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.""like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory""as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother""comparisons have been made with civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs."

To be honest, what I ate was only dried durian, I'm sure fresh is much more challenging, but it did smell like the vomit of someone who had just eaten fruit. As I type I can still smell it in my mouth (if you know what I mean). Interesting.

I watched Luther last night (the new show with Idris Elba). I thought it was pretty enjoyable utter hokum. I think there's a difference between being actually rather dangerous and edgy, and just pretending within very safe bounds. I get the impression the writer and director are big squares pretending to be naughty. The acting was good though.

I'm reading a biography of Coleridge, and listening on audio to The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. The story is about Sherlock Holmes, aged about ninety, during the 2nd World War. I have only just started it but it seems to be wonderfully well written, and it is read in a sensual, humorous and musical style by Michael York. I'll write more when I finish it (it's very short). Here is a Guardian Review.

I don't mind slow pace, like Mad Men, but I think it needs to be backed up by complexity. I will watch it, and try to work out what's missing. It seemed a bit 'darkness by numbers', darkness for beginners